Leaving no pixel behind

At the intersection of art and technology, the ever-increasing importance of screen graphics in feature film reflects the expanding arc of human-computer interaction in our everyday lives and the pervasive presence of glass screens around us. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Andrew Booth of BLIND LTD to the ongoing series of interviews with designers and artists that bring user interfaces and graphics to the big screens. In the last few years you’ve seen their work on the “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Hellboy”, “Skyfall”, “Jack Ryan” and the recently released “Kingsman: The Secret Service”, as well as in the cinematic trailers for the CRYSIS game franchise. In this interview Andrew talks about what drew him into the industry, the overall collaboration process within the feature production environment, approaching the technology world of Bond and Batman franchises to define the look and feel of the interfaces, constructing the visual language of the two competing factions in “Kingsman”, the primary goal of supporting the story and the effect it has on all aspects of the craft of screen graphics, and the two-way flow of ideas between the worlds of “fantasy” and “real” screens.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and how you got into the field of screen graphics for film.

Andrew: I love film and I love design, and it seemed a natural fit. I come from art and design background, and I like making things. It was good expressive way of doing something that was innovative and thought provoking.

Kirill: It would be a rather boring movie if all the technology it showed you would already be present in your life.

Andrew: I figure with screen graphics you want to see something that has a bit of escapism, excitement and drama about it.

Kirill: Does that get pushed by the director, the production designer and by yourself?

Andrew: Generally it’s all about the story, and within that you will have the graphical element that’s written on the page. Part of your work is reading the script, getting some ideas and then developing them.

As far as who we collaborate with? Generally speaking I deal directly with the director. We also work in conjunction and in collaboration with the art department and the visual effects supervisor.

One of the things that we do at BLIND, which is quite different from other agencies, is that we deal with graphics on set and in post.

The first film I ever worked on was “Die Another Day”. I wanted to get into films and ended up almost breaking into Pinewood Studios to visit the VFX supervisor at the time. I showed the work that I produced including a number of film specific test shots. I think the VFX supervisor was surprised that I got through the gates. Two weeks later I got a phone call and told that they had some post graphics work for me to do. That was my “in” to the industry.

Post is a very different animal compared to on set. You’re working to a specific cut length, and you might only have 12 frames to tell your story graphically.

My second job was for Guillermo Del Toro’s “Hellboy” where everything was live and on set. We had to be very diligent in the way we told the story.

Back to your question, at BLIND we collaborate with the production designer, the VFX supervisor and the director.UI Screen graphics from Hellboy / http://www.blindltd.com/hellboy / Courtesy of BLIND LTD

Kirill: And that’s where the decision between doing things on set or in post production is made? Some directors would want to see more stuff directly in camera.

Andrew: It is cyclical.

On “Hellboy” “Sahara” “Batman Begins” “Doom” “Casino Royale” “The Dark Knight” our work had predominantly been on set. Then there was a step change where everyone moved away from doing it practically. I wondered if this part of the industry was dying away. Obviously it is easy to green everything up and then think about it afterwards, however with “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Skyfall” there was a return to the practicality of doing as much as you possibly can on set.

As we speak we’re doing an on set project with the VFX supervisor who got us involved in the post-production screen graphics for “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”. We both know that we’re going to do things in post, but we’re trying to achieve as much as possible live.

Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, today I’m honored to welcome Caity Birmingham. Over the last few years she held the roles of production designer, art director and set decorator on multiple feature film and TV productions, mixing it with working on sketch comedy for web and television. In this interview she talks about what drew her away from directing into the world of the art department, the frantic world of web comedy productions, the ever-increasing diversity of platforms for creating and consuming content in the digital world that surrounds us, and her work as the art director on the recently released “White Bird in a Blizzard.”

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and your path so far

Caity: I went to school for directing but discovered I much prefer directing inanimate objects to directing actors. I enjoy working in the art department because it still allows me to participate in character development, backstory, tone, mood and setting in a very hands-on way. I got to Los Angeles about five years ago, and worked on anything I could in any aspect of the art department just to meet people and learn things. During the first few years I learned that “internship” can be a dirty word, and you never know which jobs are going to lead to big breaks or long-lasting collaborative relationships; often it’s the ones you least expect. I’ve happily tried every art dept. job from set dresser to production designer. Around the time I was meeting great art people in Los Angeles and getting to work as set dresser on movies like “Like Crazy”, I production designed my first feature “The Wise Kids“, directed by Stephen Cone. I met him through some mutual Chicago friends and filmmakers, and have since designed three features for him. I really value those kinds of ongoing collaborations. I was also lucky enough to meet some great production designers who invited me onto their teams in various roles, including Todd Fjelsted, who production designed “White Bird in a Blizzard”, and hired me as his art director.

My experience so far has been in small independent films (“White Bird” is actually one of the largest films I’ve worked on) and sketch comedy. My friend Katie Byron, another production designer I was lucky enough to meet and work with, who production designed “Like Crazy” and a bunch of other wonderful films, connected me with “Funny or Die” soon after I got to Los Angeles, and I worked on probably 40-50 of their web comedy sketches in between working on movies and other projects. I also interned at Abso Lutely Productions back in 2010 (one of my better internship experiences) and in a very roundabout way ended up back at that company this past year, taking over for Katie as production designer on “Comedy Bang! Bang!”, which is a little sketch comedy/talk show on IFC.

On the sets. Courtesy of Caity Birmingham.

Kirill: What drew you into the business, and how has that changed during the years that you’ve been working on different sets?

Caity: As an undergraduate, I was studying art at a small liberal arts school and at the same time watching tons of movies (this was before Netflix, so I was basically going row by row at the video store), and slowly realizing I wanted to work in film, but not really knowing what that meant. So I assumed I wanted to be a director and went to graduate school to figure it out. I feel really lucky to have stumbled into the art department. Like, how is there this job that combines so many of the things that interest me and that I happen to be good at? Since trying to work professionally in Los Angeles, that feeling has definitely evolved into something a little less purely optimistic. I’ve been paid next to nothing to put my hard work and creativity into projects I found fairly worthless, but for every soulless project there is another great little project with an amazing script and a delightful crew.

Kirill: You’ve been taking diverse roles in the art department – set decorator, art director, production designer. Does that explore different creative parts of your brain? Do you want to avoid repetitiveness in what you do?

Caity: One great thing about the art department is that each job is entirely different, requires different skills and presents different challenges, so repetitiveness is never a problem. I have learned that the best skills you can have are adapting quickly, communicating clearly, and solving problems creatively, and those skills apply to all projects and all art department roles, just in different ways. When I started working in Los Angeles, I was just hungry for any art department job I could get, and the experience was equally valuable whether I was working for and learning from other production designers, or figuring out how to be the production designer myself. Working in a variety of roles has definitely given me a greater appreciation for what everyone else in my department is dealing with. For example, I will never underestimate the work of the on-set dresser. It is a difficult job, and when done well, it adds a tremendous amount to the success of the art dept. and the film/show as a whole.

Kirill: How and when did you join “White Bird in a Blizzard”, and what was your part in the movie?

Caity: Todd Fjelsted is a production designer I’ve been lucky enough to work with on a few projects. He had designed Gregg Araki’s previous film “Kaboom”, as well as a number of other interesting, successful indies. I was already a big fan of the director, Gregg Araki, and when Todd mentioned the project, I told him I’d love to work on it in any capacity. I just got lucky that he needed an art director and trusted me to do it.

Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, today I’m honored to welcome the set decorator Kris Boxell. You’ve seen her work in the two sequels of “The Matrix” trilogy, “Fruitvale Station” and, most recently, “Blue Jasmine.” In this interview she talks about her first production – “The Right Stuff”, drafting and creating the right look for the specific production, working with on-set green screen environments, the day-to-day activities on the set in her role as the set decorator, her collaboration with production designer Santo Loquasto on Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine”, and a deep dive into the impact – or lack thereof – of digital revolution on her craft.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and your path in the movie business.

Kris: I came out of the television generation – from mid-fifties into the sixties. And at some point, probably in early sixties, they had a movie on every afternoon. I’d come from home to school, and there’d be a movie on. I was watching them and it was rather exciting.

Later I would go to movies, but I wouldn’t stop everything for it. Living in Los Angeles in the seventies, I couldn’t afford first-run films, so I would see revival presentations, usually two at a time, as well as foreign. My local theater would play two movies every night, and it was mostly film noir for months. When I was 18 to 21, it was this amazing exposure to such classic film noir movies, and it’s part of my soul now.

I was in college studying sociology, and then went to graduate school at UCLA, but not majoring in film. There wasn’t a very big film department; I would’ve done media studies, but it didn’t exist. I was a sociologist and a demographer doing research. Then I met my husband at San Diego Comic-Con which you probably have heard of [laughs].

Kirill: Back then it was a rather small convention.

Kris: It was tiny. You had all these artists, and I had really good friends in Westwood who had a comic-book company, and I spend all my time reading vintage comics. Then Ron Turner, a publisher from Last Gasp Publishing who did the early underground comics, introduced me to Tim Boxell, and then we were married. I moved to San Francisco and dropped out of the PhD program at UCLA, and a year later, not even intentionally, found a back door into the film industry.

My husband was doing storyboards on “The Right Stuff”. Philip Kaufman the director likes to communicate via storyboards. They started with the effects sequences, and my very first job in the movie business was taping up storyboards. Then I got hired as an art assistant in visual effects. That was waaaay before computer graphics. We threw model airplanes out of the windows [laughs]. We lit things on fire in parking lots.

I look at behind-the-scenes and voiceovers on older movies with Ray Harryhausen and other animatronics artists talking about how they did it. They were asked to do something, and then they started figuring out how to do it and seeing what works.

We did a lot of motion control on “The Right Stuff”. We had a gigantic motion control machine, and it would repeat the action of the camera. It was really thrilling to be able to do those things, and a lot of processing was in-camera, with multiple passes and a lot of mattes, background plates and glass paintings. I had a real appreciation for matte painters, and they still have an organization, and there’s a lot of history there.

Continuing the series of interviews with designers and artists that bring user interfaces and graphics to the big screens, today’s I’m excited to welcome Corey Bramall. His work spans multiple films and TV shows, from Caprica and Human Target on the small screen to Thor, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Safe House, the first two G.I. Joe and the last three Transformers movies on the big screen – just to name a few. In this interview Corey talks about the changes his field has undergone in the last 15 years, differences between TV and feature productions, working on multiple movies in the Marvel and the Transformers franchises and striking the balance between the technical nature of real-world computers and making appealing visuals for the aesthetic purposes of the overall production.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and what you do.

Corey: My name is Corey Bramall, I design and animate the graphics that are on computer screens in movies and tv shows known now as FUI (fictional or fantasy user interfaces). I have been doing this kind of work for around 15 years. I try to balance my life between family, work and play. When I’m not working I’m usually hanging out with my family or going to see live music.

Kirill: What drew you into the field of screen graphics, and how has that changed in the last 15 years or so of doing it?

Corey: I always had an interest in graphics, photography and computers so in high school I got on the yearbook design committee and was playing around with Photoshop 3… “now with layers!” and I remember thinking to myself “this is something.. I’m not sure what, but it’s something”. After high school I was working odd jobs and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life but I could never shake how fun and creative this program called Photoshop was so eventually I found a two year multimedia program here in Vancouver that offered a variety of classes like ‘Interactive Authoring’, ‘Video Production’, ‘3D Animation’ and… ‘Photoshop’. After graduating the two year program in 1999 I was trained to make CD-Rom titles which of course had gone completely obsolete. I had no industry but I had this odd array of skills that made me sort of a ‘jack of all trades’.

I had found a job at a company that produced terrible course ware for educational training and was about to call it a career at 21 when I got a call from a studio asking if I was available immediately to come and work with them to make graphics for a tv show. I took the job and the rest is sort of history. I worked at that studio for a few years and eventually started Decca Digital. One of the biggest changes in the last 15 years I would say is what’s capable technically. When I started everything was 640×480 pixels and I could backup an entire months work on a single CD. Today most of the stuff I design is full HD (1920×1080 pixels) and can be almost 2GB for just one screen. The other biggest change is just the sheer number of people designing FUI screens.

Kirill: Who do you work for during the various stages of a production, from the initial explorations during the pre-productions all the way to the post-production?

Corey: A lot of my work happens during production where I’ll create graphics to be shot in a scene so they actually have to function in a rudimentary way. I’ll build them so the onset operators can turn widows on and off, move the widows around, change backgrounds and so on. This is an interesting process because as you’re designing you have to think about how the screen will function as well. It can provide some interesting design limitations that I have to overcome and sometimes re-think. Because replacing what’s on a screen in post-production has become much easier, quicker and cheaper, a lot of times directors want graphics on the screen that they know will be replaced later just so the actor has something to interact with instead of a giant green square. I’ve work on projects were I’ve just done the production graphics, just done post-production graphics for burn-in and I’ve done both.

Kirill: Do you prefer having a full artistic freedom for a project, or a more well-defined direction?

Corey: I don’t think I’ve ever had full artistic freedom on any project, that would be amazing to have that freedom one day. Given a choice, I’d obviously prefer full artistic freedom but a lot of my work in the last few years has been for sequels or for films that take place in a universe that was created prior to me being involved so my challenge has been to stay true to that while perhaps adding some of my own style. I tend to work with a lot of the same people who have a style that they’re accustomed to so I’m often bound to that aesthetic but I’ll always find somewhere to add some personal flare.

Kirill: What are your thoughts on the term “Fantasy UIs”? How well does it capture the essence of what you do?

Corey: I think it’s a good term for this type of work. Before Mark Coleran coined the term FUI we called it all sorts of things: computer playback, screen graphics, screen design and so on. But is it Fictional User Interfaces, Fantasy User Interfaces, Faux User Interfaces? Let’s just say it’s Fantasy, once and for all ok?